I've been cooking, in one way or another, for more than 20 years. That includes my early childhood experiments like when I would try to make hashbrowns on the days when I stayed home from school. Although tasty, they were always grey, a bit mushy and very visually unappealing. In recent years I've come to be something of an adequate cook, but I know that there is always more for me to learn.

It's in that spirit of continuing food education, that I particular love the post that David Lebovitz put up the day after Thanksgiving called "Ten Easy Ways to Improve Your Cooking." His tips are really helpful and include such easy changes as using lots of shallots, making a point of incorporating fresh herbs and rethinking the oils and vinegars you cook with. Another reason to go and check out this post is for the pictures as they are just lovely (that picture of thyme up above is borrowed from his post).

There must be something in the air, because while I didn't see this post until yesterday, about a week ago on a whim I bought a large bag of shallots at my local produce market. It's been lovely having them on hand as an alternative to my normal garlic and onions. They give food a sweeter, gentler flavor that I'm loving. They aren't wimpy though and still pack a punch that stands up to many of the stronger tastes out there.

Every so often I go through phases where I try to reduce the amount of refined white sugar I eat (this is obviously not one of them, given the fact that I was baking a cake last night). It's during those times that I've acquired a variety of different sweeteners, including sucanat (basically slightly healthier cane sugar), a very large bottle of honey and a smaller squirt-bottle of agave nectar. I'm not a huge fan of the chemically constructed artificial sweeteners, I've never been able to get over their bitter aftertaste, so I haven't done any cooking with them.

Agave nectar (Nicole wrote about it here on Slashfood last February) has become my favorite substitute for sugar in drinks like iced tea and chai and now the very clever David Lebovitz has found a way to use it in agave-sweetened chocolate ice cream in order to create a frozen treat that rests at the low end of the glycemic index. I think I need to make room in my freezer for my ice cream bowl and try this one out.

I have sort of an unconventional travel resume. When I was 16 I spent three weeks in Poland, eating more pork in 21 days than I had consumed in the previous decade. The summer after I graduated from college I spent a month and a half in Indonesia, with a brief stopover in Hong Kong. Jakarta could have been a foodie paradise, except I continually made poor choices in street food and spent most of the time with a seriously uncomfortable stomach. I haven't had much luck in the way of foodie vacations.

While I'm not much of a francophile, David Lebovitz now has me longing to pack a bag and get on a plane to Paris. The reason? The most recent post on his blog, Living the Sweet Life in Paris. Friends and acquaintances often ask him to name a few places that they shouldn't miss when they visit the City of Lights and so he decided to create a post listing Ten Insanely Delicious Things You Shouldn't Miss in Paris. With pictures. Delicious!

For my last birthday, a (very generous) friend got me the ice cream maker that fits onto a Kitchen Aid mixer. I was thrilled to receive it, but then tucked it at the top of my kitchen cabinet and left it to languish for more than a month. My excuses were many, included the fact that life got busy, I didn't have room in my freezer to chill the bowl and I just didn't have any good recipes for ice cream.

However, in my travels through the many food blogs out there, I kept hearing about a book that contained fantastic and tasty recipes. The pictures and tales people posted tempted me out of my ice cream apathy, I ordered the book (David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop) and started my own experimentation with the wonders of homemade ice cream. My most recent batch was the Fresh Ginger Ice Cream (on page 43), and let me tell you, it was fantastic. I took it to dinner with friends, and at the end of the night I ran my finger around the bottom of the container in a vain attempt to grab the last few drops. The recipe is after the jump.

In my mind, Perfect Light Desserts: Fabulous Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and More Made with Real Butter, Sugar, Flour, and Eggs, All Under 300 Calories Per Generous Serving has more than just a few good things going for it. Obviously, it is geared towards slightly less fattening/lower calorie treats. The recipes use less butter or sugar than they might otherwise, and often make substitutions like swapping egg whites for whole eggs. No artificial sweeteners or other ingredients are incorporated into the pies, cakes, cookies and other baked goods, so the recipes will taste just as satisfying as their high-calorie counterparts with less guilt attached.

Author Nick Malgieri is known for his much more decadent desserts and it is somewhat reassuring to know that he really stands by these recipes, in much the same way as dessert maven Alice Medrich stands by her hugely popular book Chocolate and the Art of Low Fat Desserts. To add another chef to the mix, David Lebovitz is also recommending it and has provided the recipes for Banana Cake and Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (which look quite similar to my favorite low-fat oatmeal cookie recipe) on his blog.

If you like to bake, this is definitely one to add to your wish list for the holidays - although if you sneak out and buy yourself a copy, you'll get to "wow" your family and friends in a way that they'll appreciate at parties and other festive (food-related) occasions.

David Lebovitz thinks that Chocolate Covered Marshmallows are a difficult food to photograph and I have to agree with him, having spent a good deal of time photographing marshmallows myself. Those little pillows of sugar have a softness and lightness to them that is hard to capture on film, although that ethereal quality is not exactly what he was referring to when he expressed that opinion. He was referring to the fact that he couldn't stop eating them once he started. I don't blame him one bit, judging from this shot that he managed to snap before they were all gone.

His marshmallows are from Pierre Marcolini in Paris, but if last year was any indication, the closer we get to the holiday shopping season, the easier it will be to find chocolate covered marshmallows at chocolatiers and specialty shops in your area.

I considered cropping the picture of these Dulce de Leche Brownies, baked by Zarah Maria of Food and Thoughts, so it wouldn't be quite so tall, but I just couldn't bring myself to cut the brownies - unless it was with a knife, of course. The recipe she used is from David Lebovitz's recipe archives. It is a fairly standard brownie recipe with dulce de leche - thick, sweet caramelized milk - spread on top. Some stores carry dulce de leche in the section with the condensed and evaporated milks, but if your store doesn't, you may have to make if yourself. David gives some tips on how to do that in his recipe for the brownies.

For a somewhat less guilty version, you could try swirling some dulce de leche on top of a batch of No Pudge Brownies before baking them, too.

Jam does not have to be sweet, though it is most often defined as a preserved mixture of cooked fruit and sugar that is quite sweet. David Lebovitz kept in some of the fruit and sugar elements of a traditional jam, but added some less traditional elements to make his Shallot, Beer, Prune, and Cocoa Nib Jam. It might not be the perfect complement for your morning scone or muffin, but the sweet and savory relish makes a nice hors d'oeuvre spread with cheese and crackers or counterpart to meaty dishes, such as lamb or, as David suggests, foie gras. And even f you don't want it on a scone, it would probably still make a lovely addition to breakfast with eggs and sausage.

I noticed that David Lebovitz mentioned a concept that occurs with food stuffs in all walks of life. It is the idea that some things are too special to eat. He mentions that even in a high end restaurant that specialized in expensive, seasonal foods and went out of their way to procure the very best ingredients, some were lost because they were deemed "too good to use."

It sounds wasteful, since the food that is so precious often goes uneaten until it is past its prime, but I know that I am not the only one who is guilty of doing the same thing on at least one occasion. I have "saved" perfect strawberries, wanting to use them with the perfect dessert, only  to discover that they've gone bad by the time I want to use them. I have jars of gourmet marinades, probably from gift baskets or weekends in the wine country, that now have a thin layer of dust because I have yet to open them. Why is it that the "right time" to eat something doesn't always seem like the present?

I now make an active effort to use things up when I get them. Wonderful food is no less "special" because I don't wait too long to taste it and, in fact, may be even better because it's fresher; you will never find yourself scraping mold off the surface of a jar of a particularly wonderful chocolate spread because you waited too long to open it.

If you have ever been to one of these ice cream parlors that allows you to "mix in" toppings with your ice cream, you know that it can be a great deal of fun to create your own blends and that fresh toppings make better additions than whatever already comes in packaged ice creams. Vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries, for example, is much more interesting than store-bought strawberry ice cream. There is no need to go out to make your own creations, though - you can do it at home! David Lebovitz's homemade rocky road ice cream, which was found on Flickr, is made simply by mixing mini marshmallows and almonds (though some of those nuts look suspiciously peanutty to me) into high quality chocolate ice cream. I have no doubt that this concoction tastes better than prepacked rocky road ice creams, which never seem to have quite enough marshmallows.

For something a little lighter, I like to mix things into frozen yogurt - like brownies. Yum!

 

Looking for a tasty treat to make during Passover? Look no further than David Lebovitz's blog. The blogosphere's favorite chocolatier has posted an easy and delicious-looking recipe for Caramelized Matzoh Crunch topped with - what else - chocolate. Even if you don't normally celebrate Passover, you have surely noticed the influx of crispy matzoh in your local grocery store. It makes an excellent crispy base for these treats, which are topped with a simple toffee layer and coated in melted chocolate and slivered almonds. David offers several potential variations with his recipe, if dark chocolate and almonds aren't your favorite. White chocolate and pistachios, anyone?

It is perhaps every baker's dream to take a tour of the KitchenAid factory, but to do so by invitation is something that most bakers can only dream of. When you are the author of more than one wildly successful cookbook, though, it looks like the company will extend an invitation without even having to be asked. Food blogger, author and chef, the ex-pat American in Paris, David Lebovitz was lucky enough to get just such and invitation. He visited the factory in Greenville, Ohio, took a private tour and put on a demonstration of a few things, including rocky road and ice cream for other visitors. Yes- they do offer tours to non-professionals.

They generously allowed David to take photos along the way, so every photo in his post is an exclusive look inside the factory. He checked out some of the very first stand mixers, the assembly lines and the newest colors, like "Meyer Lemon, Martha Green (named after...), Caviar (black with silver flecks), a cheerful Green Apple, Olive, and colorfully-red Bing Cherry." According to David, each mixer takes one day to assemble and each employee assembles around 90 mixers per day. One of the things that I like about KitchenAid is that, in addition to the high quality of their products, nearly everything they sell is made in the United States, not overseas.

He said that it was one of the most fun tours he's taken, with interesting information and a very helpful staff. Be sure to drop in the next time you're passing near Cincinnati:

The KitchenAid Experience
423 South Broadway
Greenville, Ohio
Tel: 1-888-886-8318

A bicerin is the traditional drink of Turin, Italy. It has been made there since the mid 1700s, essentially unchanged over the past nearly 250 years. It is a mixture of milk and chocolate (locally produced in Italy), coffee and whipped cream. As you can see in the photo of David Lebovitz's lovely rendition of the drink, it is possible to see all three layers, the bottom layer being rich with milk and chocolate. As you might imagine, it is quite rich and it should be served in a small glass (called a bicerin, hence the name). His recipe makes it possible for you to whip up a batch of this decadent drink at home, to enjoy as you cheer on your favorite athletes at the Winter Olympic Games.